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(Re)assessing the Needs of At-Risk Students: Identity, Belonging and the Cultural Conditions of LearningVanessa Raney. Who are at-risk students? Those whose backgrounds place them in the minority. However, the term minority should be clear: students who are generally racialized, gendered and/or impoverished. This means that while the majority may be non-white students, white students can also fit the profile.
Words like multiculturalism and diversity, on the other hand, appear to me more as catch phrases for the word minority. That is, I believe we should be teaching students about the intersections of race, gender and income, rather than focusing on the specific attributes of difference between races, genders and incomes. As it stands, there appears to be a growing literature interested in the achievements of at-risk students. This interest appears two-fold: how at-risk students overcome their obstacles, and in what ways teachers can help to meet the needs of at-risk students. It is from this standpoint that I will address specific issues of at-risk students as they intersect along lines of race, gender and income. Thus, my paper seeks to be part of the greater dialogue on identity, belonging and the cultural conditions of learning. Among the scholarship I have selected toward this end is Jacqueline Jordan Irvine's Educating teachers for diversity: seeing with a cultural eye (2003), Janine Bempechat's Against the odds: how at-risk children exceed expectations (1998), and Timothy William Quinnan's Adult students "at-risk": culture bias in higher education (1997). Presenters Vanessa Raney
(United States)
M.A. Candidate History Claremont Graduate University Vanessa Raney is an M.A. candidate in History at Claremont Graduate Universisty. Her academic interests include issues of race and representation, cross-cultural phenomena, and designing a teaching methodology at the intersections of history, philosophy and politics.
Keywords
Person as Subject
(30 min. Conference Paper,
English)
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